12.1. How does Japanese write large numbers?

Japanese uses a different counting system for large numbers to
English. In English, numbers increase by thousands, so one thousand,
one million, then one billion, a thousand times a million. Japanese is
based on the Chinese system which uses ten thousand as a basic unit. A
man (万) is ten thousand, and then an oku (億) is ten
thousand times ten thousand, a hundred million. Increasing in number,
a chou (兆) is ten thousand times an oku, or a trillion.
The following list shows the first few of these large numbers.